This is the picture I found while searching for a bee in my bonnet. The title of the picture is a man "beeing bribeb"....wacky!

Anyway, the sub title of this entry is Contractions are a Thing...

I'm not sure why people get so up in arms over contractions. It's like they're the new adverbs or something. I've read, in more than one place, people saying they couldn't get into a book because of a lack of contraction usage. Really?

The original place I read it was in a review of Blue Moon. The reviewer didn't like the fact that Scott rarely used contractions.

Oddly enough, along with the fact that Nothing Ever Happens in my books, I really get into character building. I was building Scott's character with his lack of contractions. I don't want to give too much away about Red Sunset, but Scott is beginning to unbend, and now he's starting to use contractions. Maybe after Red Sunset comes out I'll write another post about that.

The latest knock on contractions came in a generic post about medieval romances. The person didn't mention which medieval books they read, but since I've written two myself my hackles went up. I got the impression that the medieval speech was too difficult to read due to the lack of contractions. Great. As if my semi-accurate speech patterns weren't enough, now there are droves of readers who balk at the lack of contractions.

I will not apologize for the lack of contractions in either my medieval or contemporary works. I have my reasons for not using them (character building in the contemporary works, and semi-accurate language in the medieval works). It's just one more thing to add to the list of "why I'll never read your stuff Rowena Sudbury!"

I ask you, if you dare, tell me why this contraction lack is so important?